The vehicle
was a custom built electric brougham
manufactured by A. H. Woods of Chicago. The automobile arrived
accompanied by a mechanic named William Johnson—an African American man who
knew how to run it and fix it. Brady immediately hired Johnson away from Woods,
dressed him in a bottle-green uniform and gave him the title of chauffeur.
Brady had
Johnson drive him around the city on five consecutive mornings between three
and four o’clock, when no one was watching, so he could be confident that the
automobile would not break down. Then he alerted the press before debuting his
horseless carriage in the daylight. On a Saturday afternoon in the spring of
1895, William Johnson in his uniform and Diamond Jim Brady in a top hat, drove
down Fifth Avenue to Madison Square.
Crowds gathered along the way to view the
spectacle and cheer them on. The new machine delighted the spectators, but
horses on the road were much less welcoming. When the brougham reached the busy
thoroughfare of Forty-Second Street at least five teams of horses bolted in
surprise and ran away. After several trips around Madison Square they stopped
at the Hoffman House and Diamond Jim went inside and ordered a lemon soda at
the bar (he did not drink alcohol.)
The trip had
caused so much disruption that the New York City Police Department ordered
Brady not to bring the contraption out again during the day. This prohibition
was short lived; within a year automobiles powered by gasoline as well as
electricity were a common sight in New York City.
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